It Begins!

Last night I bid farewell to my trusty ol' budget book. For the last four years we've tracked our expenses in this boring, no-frills binder. It has served us well.

Today begins the cash budget.

I think this will be good for all of us. After a trip to the bank this morning I sat at the table sorting bills into white, paper envelopes. Bennett, looking confused and pointing to the money, queried, "whassat?". Hmm...should I be ashamed that the child is well versed in the ways of swiping and signing but doesn't recognize cash?

He regularly "helps" at the checkout by attempting to run my library card through the self-pay thingies and then scribbling across the screen with the attached pen. Now it's time for him to learn about dollars and cents. Much better for developing math skills, I must say.

And because I like to keep thing I don't need I'm going to file away this utilitarian, blue binder. I will be fun someday to pull it back out and say "can you believe we used to spend only $x on groceries every month?" or "remember having pizza delivered to L&D while we waited for Elliott to be born?" (I actually said both of these last night while flipping through old entries).

But just imagine how much MORE fun that will be in 10 or 15 years. Super-fun, I tell ya.

Now I'm off to find a sassier alternative to our mailing envelopes. Etsy, here I come!